Día 10

El Viernes (Friday) - absolutely amazing! And it wasn't even the best part of my weekend!

We get to work and we were wandering in and out of different quirofanos waiting for something super exciting to happen - mostly there was just general surgery going on. Well we walk in to room number 2, and one of the nurses asks us who wants help out with the next surgery. The patient has appendicitis and needed to get it removed. Obviously I jump at this opportunity - actually getting to scrub in and help with surgery...yes please! Well there's three of us in the hospital, and after a short discussion I end up being the one who gets to do it! (We're going to head back to surgery next week though so my friend Christina can help out with one too.) All of the doctors and nurses in the room were super helpful and extremely nice, so I ended up not being nervous at all. Although I didn't get to actually cut the appendix out or anything like that, I did get to hold back layers of skin and muscle, hand instruments, soak up blood, etc. It was so freaking cool!! Christina took some pictures of me, so below you'll get to see the progression. The first picture is me before surgery, already sterile, about to get dressed. The second picture is me chatting with the doctor, and the third is me holding back some skin and what not - super exciting! After the appendix was removed, they let me take a picture with it hahaha. This thing was huge, by the way. And extremely hard - kind of like a frozen grape. So yeah, it was a successful day at work to say the least! Next week we're heading to Infectious Diseases - should be pretty interesting. 

Everyone in our group got off work early on Friday, around 1, so that we could go do some sight seeing. We first head to Los Tres Ojos, which is in un parque nacional (a national park). It's 3 lagoons that are in a system of caves. There's a fourth lagoon, but isn't considered and 'eye' simply because it's not in a cave - it's just open above it. Back in the day, the Taíno people used to live in these caves, and after we saw them we understood why. It reminded me of a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, no joke. Sadly, the pictures I have don't do it justice, but believe when I say this place was breathtaking. We seriously wanted to just dive in to the clear blue water and spend our whole day there! The fourth lagoon, on the other hand, reminded me of a scene from Avatar. I decided that if I could live in the wild somewhere, it would be there for sure. Check it out! Oh, and the random picture of the guy in the second set - funny story. We're all sitting on this bench, just admiring the beauty of it all. He comes up and tells us that the park is closing and we had to leave. Well, he was talking so fast in Dominican and none of us had any idea what he was saying, so we literally just sat there staring and smiling at him for a solid 30 seconds. He repeated what he said, and we finally realized that he was asking us to leave. So before we leave, I ask him, "Puedes tomar un fotó por favors?" (Can you take a picture, please?) We all gather and pose, and he points the lens of the camera at himself. Uhm, is this like a joke he always plays on tourists? It's not. We're just stunned. Finally, our friend Aaron goes over and shows him how to take a picture. We pose again and I guess he didn't get it, because he points the lens at himself yet again. None of us could keep from laughing, and we just let him take the picture. What else could we do!? We show him a second time how to take the picture, and finally come up with a decent picture. It was a priceless moment to say the least!

Our day isn't over, so we head to the outskirts of Santo Domingo. Well, the outskirts is actually the coast of the country. And it's absolutely gorgeous! We don't understand how people in this country ever get anything done - I feel like I would spend all of my time wandering the country seeing all of the beautiful things! It honestly doesn't seem real to me! 

We spent the rest of the night just hanging out and packing - we had a big weekend in Jarabacoa to rest up for. I'll update you all about my weekend as soon as I can tomorrow! Buena noche mis amores!